by Lisa Daniels
“It will be,” he promised, wrapping his arms around her.
He shot one last look over his shoulder at Mara, who stared helplessly at them as Tanya pulled her back into the house.
I spent three years furious with that woman, he realized. But if it wasn’t for Mara, I would have never met Teresa. Weird how life works out.
“Come on,” Teresa murmured. “We have to get moving.”
He nodded, releasing her, and he exhaled, jumping into the driver’s side of the car, the irony making him chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Teresa asked, cocking her head to the side curiously, but he shook his head, pulling away from the curb.
For the first time since his father had been killed, Luca felt like he could breathe.
Even though there’s a dead body in my trunk.
Epilogue
She leaned into the wicker basket, pulling out a crisp, white sheet against the darkening summer sky, and bit on her lower lip as she peered into the heavens.
This sucks, Teresa thought grumpily, eyeing the clouds with contempt. I just spent an hour washing these and now I’m going to have to redo everything.
Indeed, she had hunched over the rocks at the Stagno Feraxi, doing the wash over the water like she was some turn-of-the-century pioneer woman.
And now it was going to rain. After all that.
But this is my life now, she mused with both happiness and concern. Salt of the earth, living quietly and not rousing attention by making flashy purchases in the small village where the people still gathered in the square to drink coffee and gossip about their neighbors.
“You look like you’re struggling,” Luca laughed, stepping from the back of their villa, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “Let me help you.”
“What’s the point?” she grumbled. “It’s going to rain!”
She gestured up at the sky in exasperation. To her annoyance, Luca’s smile widened and he grabbed the sheet from her hands, lowering it back into the basket, shaking his head.
“So then you’ll wash them again tomorrow,” he replied. “I might even help you. What else do we have to do?”
The question irritated her and Teresa scoffed and scowled, folding her arms across her chest.
“Easy for you to say,” she snapped. “You didn’t spend the entire morning slaving over the laundry. Do you have any idea how much work this is? Lugging it to the river, scrubbing all—”
To her increasing anger, he burst into laughter and reached toward her to pull her into an embrace, but she slapped him away which only made him howl louder.
“What is so funny?” she demanded.
It took him a few seconds to compose himself as she stood fuming, waiting for a reasonable explanation for why he was mocking her.
He doesn’t understand what I do to make our lives pleasant, she thought furiously, parting her mouth to give him another blast, but he held up his hand, his face creased in glee.
“Look at you!” he gasped, dabbing the corners of his eyes. “Just look.”
Teresa froze and waited for him to elaborate.
This better be good before I whip something at his head, she thought, looking around for something hard and impactful. The first drops of water began to fall from the sky but she was too busy glaring at him to notice as the warm, southern Italian rain fell upon them.
“What?” she demanded. “What about me?”
Gently but firmly, Luca yanked her closely.
“First of all,” he murmured into her ear, “you’re yelling at me in Italian.”
His hands snaked down along her body and pulled her close so she could feel the curve of his hips against hers.
“So what? We’re in Italy,” she snapped back but there was less irritation in her voice as she began to understand his point. She hadn’t even realized that she was speaking in her second language. It had come naturally.
“Secondly,” he continued, dropping a sweet kiss on her mouth, “you’re dressed like a peasant woman. I’d say you’ve assimilated.”
Teresa couldn’t help but snicker.
“Is there a third?” she asked, tipping her head to the side, permitting him to sample the detail of her throat.
“Yes,” he murmured. “The third thing is, if laundry is the worst of our problems right now, we’re in pretty damned good shape.”
She had to admit that he was right and as his mouth continued to explore her, she thought of how they had come to be in a place where her biggest woe was redoing the laundry under the sensual rain of their island paradise.
It had not always been so simple. Their new identifications had come at a steep price and even as they found themselves hunkered on the Mediterranean Sea, at Villaggio Colostrai, the year they had spent becoming Luca and Teresa Bernardo, a married couple from England, had not been easy.
Teresa had spent the time looking over her shoulder, waiting for the FBI or the mob to burst through the hut of their inconspicuous villa, demanding answers or vengeance.
The idea of being wrenched from the tentative but happy life she and Luca had built together made her sick to her stomach and every day, she desperately wanted to reach out to Valentina and see if she had been found, if Tanya was safe.
Of course, her training and well-honed sense of self-preservation kept her from doing any such thing. If they had been found, there was no doubt in Teresa’s mind that both her cousin and her cousin’s lover’s devices would be closely monitored.
No, they had needed to make a clean break from Miami and everything they had ever known.
When did I finally start feeling safe? When was it I actually became Teresa and not Angela Garnet?
The answer, it seemed, happened long before she and Luca had made their daring escape via cruise ship, as if along with their lives, they had forsaken all modern amenities in the new world.
I became Teresa the minute I walked into La Perla an eternity ago. Angela Garnet doesn’t exist anymore.
She reminded herself that the woman who had walked into the bar that night had been another woman and not the one who stood fuming about the laundry needing a rewash in the province of Ogliastra.
“I like you like this,” he purred, urging her downward into the damp grass below them.
“You like me screaming at you like a shrew?” she giggled, all her previous misgivings forgotten under the drizzle of rain and his warm kisses.
Goosebumps covered her from head to toe, her hair plastered to her face as the gale whipped up over the water, spraying them with cold, but neither seemed to notice.
Luca’s head trailed along the line of her belly, his tongue tickling her deliciously.
Suddenly, she tensed.
“Luca!” she hissed, sitting up abruptly, her eyes fixating across the driving rain toward the pond. He fell sideways, his face puckering.
“Ow,” he complained, not immediately noticing her concern. “You didn’t have to push me!”
She didn’t notice his grimace of annoyance, her eyes fixated on the horizon. Reaching for her dress, which was in a sodden pile nearby, she jumped to her feet, hastily pulling the cloth to her body. She pointed at the boat nearing them, her heart racing.
“Who is that?” she choked. “We have to get out of sight!”
She hurried toward the stucco house beyond the wisteria. She didn’t bother to see if her lover followed, her head light with dizziness.
Slamming through the back door, she ducked behind the wall and peered out toward the pond at the lone vessel headed toward shore.
To her horror, she saw Luca ambling toward the boat.
What the hell is he doing? she wondered, terror filling her to the point of breathlessness. Helplessly, she watched as he trotted ono the sinking sand and waved toward the schooner. She couldn’t make out his words against the storm but his hand gestures troubled her.
Who the hell is he waving to?
They knew better than to attract attention to themselves. Keeping a low profile was wh
at they did best. It was why they had selected the tiny, obscure villa, away from neighbors, away from town.
The idea was that they saw no one day to day and that they saw people coming from a mile down the plain, unmanned road in either direction. It gave them enough time to run if need be.
Yet Luca seemed unfazed by the newcomer, as if a tired boat floating through the stormy pond was commonplace.
Teresa realized she was trembling as she stood, watching as a face appeared on deck, and the men in the storm continued to gesture at one another.
Unreasonable fear and guilt gripped her heart as she stood, shivering and naked behind the wall, peering into the storm.
I shouldn’t have left him there. I need to go to him. What if that is one of Giovanni’s men? What if I am about to watch Luca be killed right before my eyes?
Logic had no place in her thoughts as she waited for the other shoe to drop. There was no way for the Miami crime boss to have found them. They had used a combination of her sources and his to plan their escape, neither one knowing about the other.
It been a year, after all. Surely the mob had moved on to more pressing issues than an AWOL capo… hadn’t they?
Inhaling sharply, Teresa made her decision, stepping out from behind the wall, barely acknowledging her nakedness as her concern for Luca drove her forward.
No sooner had she crossed the threshold into the muddy yard than the tin boat started up and puttered toward the way it had come.
“What the hell was that all about?” she gasped, running to Luca.
“What the hell are you doing running around naked?” he countered, growling in disapproval. “Get back in the house!”
“Who was that?” she insisted, even as Luca took her arm and firmly steered her back toward the villa.
“I should spank your ass for showing your goods to a hundred-year-old Italian man.”
She cast him a sidelong look, slightly ashamed that the idea was not unappealing. Moreover, she was relieved that it was some apparently geriatric fisherman who had lost his way and not a threat to them.
Inside, Luca ran for a towel and returned to pat her dry as she stood dripping in the kitchen.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to worry, cara mia?” he murmured, wrapping her trembling frame inside the terrycloth and drawing her against his solid body. “I would never put you in danger. Don’t you trust me by now?”
But it had nothing to do with trusting him and he knew it. He was just trying to make her feel safe, despite the futility of the effort.
“When will we be able to stop looking over our shoulders?” she murmured, permitting her guard to be lowered slightly as he continued to gently dry her.
“It’s funny you should ask that,” he replied, smiling. Teresa stared at him, cocking her head slightly to the side.
“Funny ‘ha-ha’ or funny ‘we’re going to die’?” she asked, trying to keep her tone nonchalant.
“You need to get that idea out of your head,” Luca sighed. “That fisherman came bearing good news.”
Her body tensed despite his touch and she eyed him warily.
“What good news? How did you know him? What was he doing here? Does he know who we are? How do you know he won’t rat us out?”
The questions erupted from her in rapid-fire succession and Luca grimaced, falling back on his heels. For the first time, she realized he was as soaked as she had been, although why he wouldn’t be, she couldn’t say. He had been out in the gale longer than she had.
But that was hardly the pressing issue and she waited for him to finish his thought.
“Once a cop, always a cop, huh?” he snickered.
“This isn’t amusing to me, Luca. Who was he?” she shot back, fear edged with ice marking her words.
Slowly, her lover rose to his feet, his emerald eyes light with something she couldn’t easily identify.
“Giovanni thinks we’ve been assassinated.”
The words sent a wave of uncontrollable shivers through her body and she gaped at him in shock. It was terrifying and yet comforting simultaneously and her mind struggled to make sense of the information.
“What? How? How do you know?”
“That man you saw is a part of the mob resistance in Italy. I’ve been working with the group since we arrived.”
“YOU WHAT?” Teresa screamed. “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!”
“Jesus Christ, Ter, calm down. I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you? DO YOU?”
It didn’t seem that way to her but when he grabbed her by the arms and shook her as if trying to knock some sense into her, she found herself staring at him with hopeful eyes.
“Yes,” he replied quietly. “I do. I’ve been plotting our fake deaths since we arrived and it’s finally happened. They aren’t looking for us anymore.”
Her lips parted but no sound came out although another dozen questions threatened to erupt from her.
“Trust me, cara. It’s done.”
“Trust you? You didn’t tell me that our cover had been blown, that—”
“Because I knew you would react like this,” he interjected, a slight growl to his tone. “You need to pull yourself together and listen to me. You’ve already been walking on eggshells, giving yourself heart palpitations. The last thing you needed was the added stress of knowing I was working with the local resistance.”
Teresa’s heart was doing backflips and for a moment, she thought she might be having a stroke. Outside, the thunder rumbled like foreshadowing in some bad movie but Luca reached up to clasp her face between his palms.
“Focus on my face,” he instructed as if sensing her propensity to swoon. “I’m telling you that we’re safe now. We have nothing to worry about, nothing to stress about.”
“How can you be sure?” she murmured, desperately wanting to believe him. He seemed so confident in what he was saying and she couldn’t image him saying such a thing unless he was certain. If he’d hidden his involvement with this underground group for so long, he definitely wouldn’t make such a bold statement unless he was sure.
Or at least he thinks he’s sure.
She willed herself to be rational and she nodded reluctantly.
“How did they do that? There’s dental records and fingerprints and DNA—”
“Not in a mob hit,” he offered quietly and she clamped her mouth shut, staring at him imploringly.
God, how she wanted to believe what he was saying. He had kept her out of harm’s way for that long, hadn’t he? Luca certainly knew more about the ways of the mob than she did from her limited stint in Miami Beach.
“Breathe,” he coached her. “Look at me and breathe.”
She continued to study his face, the assuredness she saw beginning to break down her nervousness.
“So…” she exhaled. “That’s it? There’s no one after us anymore?”
Saying it aloud sounded strange to her ears but to her surprise, Luca shook his head.
“It’s over. We can live our lives freely now. No one is looking for us.”
It was difficult to accept but she could not stop herself from nodding slowly, her heart gradually returning to its normal pace as she weighed the words.
“You look like you’re going to cry,” Luca mumbled, drawing her toward him, and as their bodies melded together in perfect conformation as they had since the beginning, she realized he was right.
His heartbeat was just as intense as hers.
It had never really occurred to Teresa that he was as scared as she had been since their escape. After all, he was a capo, accustomed to dealing with death and watching for trouble.
But that’s not true. He’s not a capo anymore. He’s just Luca Bernardo, husband and peasant now. We aren’t the same people we were when we came.
His fingers entwined in her hair and she sighed, finally permitting the last of the stress to release from her body.
“So?” Luca breathed after a long moment of silence. “What
do you think about all this?”
She pulled back slightly and eyed him.
“I have no idea what to think of it,” she confessed. “I feel like it’s too good to be true and that I’m going to have a hard time accepting it, but…”
“But?”
“But I trust you and I know you’re the reason we’ve gotten this far.”
He chuckled dryly.
“I think it was a team effort,” he corrected. “But I wouldn’t say anything unless I was sure about this. It took a lot of careful planning, Ter, but we finally got Giovanni off our trail.”
She let a small smile onto her face and she nodded.
“I believe you,” she told him and she meant it.
“So… what do we do now?” she asked, unsure of what else to say, and he snorted.
“That’s the point, Teresa, we can do whatever we want. If you want, we can leave here and get a house in Cagliari or Nuoro. We have enough money to do whatever we want.”
She scrunched her nose slightly, studying his face. It was true; Luca had squirreled away quite a nest egg to keep them sustained for a while, but even without it, if they were free, truly free, they could acquire jobs under their fake identities.
We could live like normal people. Imagine that!
“You want to move into a city?” she asked skeptically and Luca shrugged.
“I don’t care where we go from here. There’s no need to hide out in the middle of nowhere anymore,” he explained. “I only ever wanted to come to Sardinia and live by the sea with you. Little did I know that my geography was off, but I am living with you and we are by the sea if not in Sardinia.”
“We can still go north if you want,” she replied, a spark of excitement filling her as she said it. It was the first time they had ever considered moving into the public eye.
I believe him! This is really happening.
A beam curled on her lips and she nodded.
“All right,” she said softly. “I have an idea.”
He stared at her expectantly and she was abruptly flooded with a relief so great, she was almost brought to her knees.
“Let’s stay right here in Villaggio Colostrai in our tiny little villa, doing laundry against the rocks while you mock me.”
